Despite what anyone might think, having a Nobel Peace Prize does not immediately make you popular in high school.

Education activist Malala Yousafzai shared reflections on life beyond her own advocacy, including the difficulty of making friends as a well-known teen in a new nation, her own mental health challenges and more during a sold-out event Tuesday (Nov. 18) at the Mondavi Center for the Performing Arts.

Chancellor Gary S. May interviewed Yousafzai for the UC Davis Chancellor's Colloquium Distinguished Speakers Series, in a conversation that was full of laughs and more than one standing ovation from the audience of nearly 1,700 people.

May asked Yousafzai why she wrote Finding My Way, a memoir published last month.

“I decided to share more about my life at this stage because, of course, my story has been out in the public for a long time,” Yousafzai said. “But you know, I wanted to connect with people and reintroduce myself and share my true reflections on how life has been for me (and) what have I learned along the way, and I hope that people will get to know me more through Finding My Way.”

Yousafzai’s advocacy dates back to 2009, when she wrote for the BBC under a pseudonym about the effect a Taliban-instituted ban on girls’ education was having on ordinary schoolchildren in her region of Pakistan. She continued to advocate publicly for access to education, and in 2012 survived being shot in the head by a Taliban gunman in reprisal for her activism. In 2014 she was named a joint recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize for her “struggle against the suppression of children and young people and for the right of all children to education.” At 17 years old, she was youngest ever Nobel laureate.

Friendship, love, mental health

Yousafzai’s story doesn’t end there, and at Tuesday’s event she discussed everything from the way she had been pulled from her chemistry class to be told she had won the Nobel Prize to her struggle to adapt to high school and college in England, where her family had moved during her recovery.

Yousafzai and May touched on topics like the activist’s role as a “relationship advisor” to her friends and later her own struggle to accept that she could ever be loved by Asser Malik, whom she would eventually marry.

“I was very honest in sharing my story in this book,” Yousafzai said. “It has been really difficult.”

Yousafzai and May also discussed identity and the added difficulty women face when expressing themselves, with Yousafzai sharing her own struggles with what version of herself to present to new friends in England. She recalled thinking that if she wore a more traditional, formal dress, her friends would only see her as the public figure version of herself. She said she “desperately wanted to be a normal student,” seeking advice through Google searches like “Selena Gomez casual styles.”

But when she was photographed wearing jeans and a sweater, critics accused her of abandoning her Pakistani heritage. She pointed out that her two younger brothers were never criticized for wearing jeans and T-shirts.

May identified friendship as a major theme in Yousafzai’s book, and that topic made an impact on Jingwen Zhang, an associate professor of communication who attended the colloquium with her 9-year-old daughter, who wanted to bring a friend.

Zhang said she and her daughter visited the Nobel Prize Museum in Stockholm, Sweden, over the summer and examined the portraits of various winners.

“The first question she asked me was: ‘Why are there so many boys?’” Zhang said.

“It feels magical that we can see her in the same year,” Zhang said after last week’s talk. 

Yona, 9, described Yousafzai’s talk as “really cool” and “funny.” 

Laughs, encouragement

Throughout the discussion, Yousafzai kept the audience laughing. When May joked that he’d never had the chance to ask someone where they keep their Nobel prize, she replied with a matter-of-fact: “Undisclosed.”

And when May read a question from an audience member who recalled reading Yousafzai’s debut memoir, I Am Malala, eight times while in middle school, Yousafzai jokingly replied: “OK, that’s too much. Even I haven’t read it eight times.”

But the conversation also touched on serious topics, like the millions of dollars the Malala Fund has issued in grants to education activists and organizations focused on policy change in places like Pakistan, Nigeria, Tanzania, Ethiopia, Afghanistan and elsewhere.

“I know that there are millions of girls out there who, just like that 11-year-old Malala, are asking us to do something for them,” Yousafzai said. “So if there’s one thing that I want to make happen in my lifetime, it’s to ensure that girls have equal opportunities to learn, to play and to make their dreams come true.”

May read a question from an 11-year-old audience member who asked how girls in the United States can help girls elsewhere in the world who don’t have equal access to education.

“What they need is support in solidarity,” Yousafzai said, citing girls in Afghanistan calling for access to schooling despite a Taliban edict limiting girls to a sixth-grade education. Yousafzai encouraged audience members to work on raising awareness of issues like that one.

May, a father of two girls, asked what men can do to be more supportive of gender equity.

Yousafzai recalled her early activism for girls’ education, in an environment where most fathers or brothers stopped girls from speaking out.

“The only thing that’s unique in my story is that my father did not stop me,” she said, encouraging men in attendance to give women space to advocate for themselves.

An impact on attendees

Davis resident Irena Asmundson, the founder of Practical Idealism Economics and former chief economist at the California Department of Finance, said stories like Yousafzai’s inspired her to go into economics and study issues of equity.

Asmundson recalled being in middle school, thinking how unfair it was that she was getting to play youth soccer while girls in areas controlled by the Taliban were being married off. She reflected on the impact of Yousafzai’s talk after the event.

“It was amazing,” Asmundson said.  “She’s such an inspiration.” 

Fidak Zaidi, a third-year international relations major, said she left the event “feeling very inspired.”

“As a Pakistani American living in the West, a lot of her talking points were very relatable,” Zaidi said.